Social media tools are stream of consciousness amplifiers. They do more than this, of course. But their role bringing to the surface things that were most certain lost a generation ago to the public record make them easy targets for the uninitiated. For some, it’s just the watercooler on a much larger scale.

The biggest misconception about the social is that it’s about personal relationships. This accounts for much of the outsider Twitter rage. I began to revolt when news stations started assigning “reporters” to use Twitter as a focus group (Brad J. Ward smartly began using that as a way to help the tool to the uninitiated, not me.)

Most of the rancor comes from cubicle farmers. They feel left out, because they feel a declining sense of relevance about what they do. Plus, a lot of them don’t have the time in their days to engage audiences and the ones that do, find the whole process a bit too daunting. I imagine it must be like playing the same sport and getting good at it for twenty years, then picking up a new one and feeling like an amateur. It’s the sort of humbling that a professional who’s near the top of their career can find extremely uncomfortable to deal with.

Everyone doesn’t need to use Twitter. Media buzz convinces people they need to do things everyone else is doing, because it must have some relevance to all of us. But it doesn’t. Social tools like Twitter and Facebook are about connections and trust. If the majority of your circle communicate over the phone, with you at work or in other direct ways, tweeting them is a lot of work.

Heck, for some people even texting is a hassle. Then there are the people whose lives are so consumed with other stuff, they wonder how any of us have time for this stuff at all. But that’s for another blog post.

For many of the Twitter denizens, these tools get used in three key ways:

1. You use it to extend your network
2. Connecting to people who you already know (and ones you meet later.)
3. People who get introduced to you from other people.

Not everyone has a job that really warrants this sort of constant interaction. Is that a bad thing? No. The same insights, information and education gets transferred via word of mouth channels just as quickly as it does on the social web. The reason social web tools are amplifiers, is they’re taking what already exists in the status quo and helps people put messages — gossip, news or whatever else people talk about — on a fast-track that might fade into an abyss of nothingness or might be picked up and carried many times around the globe.

For some, that’s frustrating. They see the web as a place with huge pools of people, among whom, some must be just like them. When they can’t readily connect with those likeminded folks, it feels like a character flaw, so they immediately resent the technology that made it possible. They see the conversations other people have, with the inanities of favorite television shows, sports, music, relationships and so forth and immediately begin to think “surely nothing productive is going on here. What’s the point of this waste of time anyway?” While their shortsightedness is understood, I wonder how many social media experts (heh) are willing to actively say “you don’t need this. Go fly a kite or play with your kids. This isn’t relevant to your everyday life.”

Our insights are impacted by those we interact with. This is common sense, but the further people get from folks who don’t understand the social web and what their frustrations, concerns and problems are; the less acute the awareness of their problems tend to be. Staying connected to the people who have “no use” for the social web can only help those of us who do.

By sharpening our lessons through the questions of the accidental Luddites, we can improve the tools we use now and make the ones on the horizon even better.

Just seven months old with about 60,000 users so far, Foursquare is still getting off the ground — especially when compared with supersize services like Facebook and Twitter, which have millions of members. But that underground status is part of Foursquare’s appeal, its fans say. It is not yet cluttered with celebrities, nosy mothers-in-law or annoying co-workers.

“On Twitter, there are more than 3,000 people that follow me, and Facebook is more of a business community now,” said Annie Heckenberger, 36, who works at an advertising agency in Philadelphia. “Foursquare is more of the people that I actually hang out with and want to socialize with.”

That brings up a point that Michael Stoner touches on in his recent post, where he coins the term “engagement fatigue.” In short he says:

The disorder is engagement fatigue. Engagement fatigue will occur when mass numbers of people participating in social networking—everyone who is making marketers salivate because they’re swarming to Facebook, Twitter, etc.—get tired of brand engagement marketing and tune out.

What happens when you get tired of hearing from people? Don’t want to see their photos, don’t care what their kids are doing potty training and feel the need to create a nebulous profile blocks to ensure that certain people can’t see everything? What happens when the tools we use become too ubiquitous to be useful anymore? Well we know what happens, we move on to other things. But when those tools become a big part of our lives? I know my answers to this question, but it’s a bigger one I’m putting out there for the wider audience.

Is this some sort of permissive intrusiveness that we’re sanctioning through permissions on a web site? How far does it go and for what aims? I realize this is almost a backwards argument, given how far we’ve gone with most sites these days, but I wonder exactly what we expect to be doing with our Facebook profiles in five years.

At least when I used AOL in the 90s, you knew when you deleted your account, your profile and screen name went away too. As it turns out, those profiles weren’t all that interesting anyway. But now? Facebook is better than any family photo album you can find. I guess this is just part of their longevity strategy, but I really am mulling (and no, there’s no real punchline to this post, sorry..I’m just musing) over where we’re really headed with all of this and how profound an effect it’ll have on our social interactions over the next half decade or so.

It’s already affecting us, but I think we’re just scratching the surface. So much of what we talk about in these contexts almost becomes solely focused on how we can profit from these intimate details that people give up freely and I’m really wondering about the ethics of this and whether we’re not riding a bobsleigh towards a place that none of us really want to go until it’s too late and we’re already at the bottom of the course.

Thoughts?

To the person on the outside looking in, Twitter is akin to passing notes to your friends about the most inane matters possible. To the more cynical among us, it’s a reflection of the general “me first, me second” tendencies of millennials and Generation Y. When you tell them the majority of the users are over the age of 30, that it’s largely a tool for business and that Dell made a $1 million bucks last year in revenue JUST USING TWITTER they sit upright in their chairs and have more to tell you.

Look, social media is really about being social. You have to see it, hear it and engage it. And my friends, Twitter is all about engagement.

Here’s what’s great about Twitter:

1. Customers front and center People might not a Twitter from a Twiddler. In a world where sound bites can kill political campaigns and folks have seemingly infinite content possibilities, Twitter is network of audiences ready and engaged to hear what you have to say.

Tell them you’ll save them money or share some interesting news and they’ll keep following you. Unlike a blog, a newspaper or even a radio station, Twitter can pretty much go ANYWHERE I go. Through text updates, I can get notice of a major event almost instantly. So whether it’s a sale or something worse, Twitter usually breaks the story.

2. Let’s build our relationship… In the old days, how did mom and pop stores thrive? They build relationships with their customers. In the era of the big box retailer, shopping mall and Walmart behemoth, some might think that relationships have gone by the wayside. But it’s just not true. In the past, if you made a customer upset due to poor service or something else, they might tell a friend or a family member via the phone. The likelihood that you’d see a shift in business as a result of one angry customer was relatively small. Today? A customer who is upset with your brand could Twitter about it and word spreads instantly to legions of others who can air their similar grievances, causing harm to your brand that you knew nothing about. That is, unless you’re proactive.

3. Meet ‘n Greet 2.0: Those conversations with colleagues from around the globe have never been more dynamic. The water cooler now takes place across time zones and it’s happening in real time, without leaving your desk. It used to be, that after you met someone at a conference you had to fumble through cards to remember who they were. Or more recently, you’d add them on something like Facebook or LinkedIn, which was either too close or too distant for them to be useful. Now? Twitter is the new business card.

What do you think is great about Twitter?